For 35 years, I spent untold time every day quietly contemplating ways to do myself in. Even if the thoughts were only in the back of my mind. Thankfully, I never had even a fraction of the courage/stupidity to do it.
I wasn’t ill and dying, or it might have made a little sense. I just hurt inside, and didn’t know how to get relief. Ever since I was in my mid-teens, I’d felt abandoned and betrayed.
Honestly? I don’t even remember why. But my life looked valueless, hopeless and futile.
Oh, I played cheerful and bright and strong and powerful during the day when I was with other people – especially later on as an adult when I was with my painting and carving students.
But at night I cried myself to sleep. Every night.
A RAY OF HOPE OUT OF THE BLUE
One morning in June of 2001, something happened. As usual, I struggled to wake up from fear-filled chase dreams. I unwound from my nightly fetal position, and my regular habit of crying myself into the new, unwelcome day began.
But just then, a little, brilliant sliver of sun sneaked through a hole in my heavy, dark curtains, right onto my face.
It felt so good, that little ray. I lay there for a bit, just enjoying the warmth and the light.
And then…
…all my old thoughts and worries and fears swamped me again, and I got distracted from enjoying that little ray of light.
Even as I got distracted in that moment, though, I knew somehow that it had been one of those magic moments I’d heard about but hadn’t ever allowed myself to really believe in – because of course OTHERS could have good stuff like that happen to them, but not me! Poor poor me. Wah.
NEVER, EVER ANY RELIEF EVER.
I believed that not ever, in my lifetime of pain and hurt, was I going to get out of the memories, the pain, shock, and disbelief that anyone could ever do what ‘they’ did to me.
Distrust ran my life.
Shame about it ran a close second.
Fear that anyone would find out, a tight third.
BUT….
Later on that same day, it happened again! I was sitting in the way far back corner of a cafe, where I could keep my back to the wall and see every person who walked in.
My friend the owner agreed to allow me to use the back door to run out if I felt endangered. I never did. As with anywhere I went, I carried the burden of my past with me, and sat there in darkness and fear.
That day, somehow, a little sneaky ray of sun popped itself through the front window of the cafe and splashed itself onto a spot on my table. It flashed there for two seconds, and was gone.
I KNEW….
You know those gut feelings you get that are Truth, not fear? Suddenly I knew – I KNEW – that something was up, that something was going to happen, but had no idea what it was.
And the shift came.
I heard myself say, “I’m so (#!@%!!&*#!) tired of this stupid shame and distrust and fear. No matter where I go or who is there, I’ve been afraid – since before I could form words. Enough. I’m DONE with this.”
As I thought that to myself, I felt my chest swell up and my belly tighten. My back all of a sudden regained its natural erect posture – it was amazing. I didn’t TRY to do any of that. It was as if just my inner decision to be done – DONE – with this old story, had changed my very physiology.
I’m not saying I never went back into fear, because I did, and a lot.
But I kept that moment of “I’m done!” as far to the front of my thoughts as I could.
And when I caught myself being afraid again – it was such an insidious, all-encompassing thing, that fear, never allowing me one moment of unconsciousness – I’d recall that phrase, and say it out loud.
In my bedroom, door closed, I’d shout it. LOUD.
In my car, driving anywhere, I shouted it.
I wrote it down and stuck it up on my computer.
When I did said or shouted it, suddenly it seemed as if there was an empty space in front of me. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was like a pool of fresh air, right there before me, big enough for me to step into.
Later I realized that it was my very own personal feeling of peace and choice. So I learned to stand in that peace and ask my inner wisdom, “what can I do right now that would help me extend and expand this feeling more?”
MORE! MORE!
So I kept standing in that space of peace and choice, asking and asking for more, until now I really AM at peace, and I DO have choice…and I DO have joy.
When I met and learned EFT (tapping), it was the final straw that broke the pain game. Yes, I call it a game, because it’s false. It isn’t you, the REAL you. It’s entertainment of the worst and lowest order.
NO NUMBING FOR ME!
I remember trying Prozac. Ugh! I felt so dead inside! I chose to stop taking it – even the pain was better than being a zombie! You can’t just take pills to not feel anymore, because you’ve wasted all that time in trying to push it away, but the pain will erupt one day anyway.
NO MORE REPEATING THE OLD STORY!
And I found it impossible to talk my way out of it, the way shrinks want you to – it just makes it all come back, the same feelings, the same voices, the same sights, and you feel worse than when you started talking – with no release or relief!
TAP, DARN IT!
Tapping* saved me from years and years of slow slogging. I was able to take my determination of “I’m DONE” and the memory of that little bright ray and my question, “what can I do right now” and accelerate my progress.
Literally 6 weeks after started tapping, my depression and any shred of suicidal thinking was gone.
CHOICES? REALLY?
As weird as it may sound, feeling bad – and feeling bad about feeling bad! – really are choices.
I do not say that lightly.
I know how impossible that sounded when people said that to me, and how angry and resentful I felt about it. I was so stuck on hanging onto my pain story that I refused to see any other way to be, see or feel.
I wanted freedom, but I also wanted payback. When I let that go, my freedom was assured.
So.
• I ask you right now to choose, “I’m DONE!” – with whatever pain you are experiencing on a daily or consistEnt basis – even physical.
• I ask you right now to choose to find that one bright something that happened to you one time that made you sit up and feel good, even if it was only for a split second. Remember it, hold it in the front of your mind.
• I ask you right now to ask your inner wisdoM, “What is one >small< thing I can do in this moment to create a better mindset for the rest of my life?’
• And when it answers, DO what it says to do! Even if it’s only take a nap! Unquestioning! And with faith in your eternal perfect Beingness.
• Keep asking and keep doing. And tapping.
YOU DESERVE WAY MORE than a life in a dark, curtained room, lying there in the fetal position, not trusting that anything better will ever be there for you.
Outside that curtain, the sun shines every day!
Remember: YOU are the one who closed the curtain!
YOU DESERVE WAY MORE than the OK place you may be in right now. You really do deserve that BEST-EVER place just waiting for you to claim it.
MAKE THE DECISION:
“I’M DONE! WITH THIS PAIN!”
You know I love you!
aloha –
Angela
* EFT / TAPPING:
Don’t know about EFT? Go here:
EFTinEveryHome.com (free demo)
EFTBooks.com
.